cold humor2

8/4/2019 Cold Humor2

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THE

BROOME

STREET

REVIEW

No.2

THE

BROOME

STREET

REVIEW

No. 2


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The Broome Street Review2010NEW YORK, NEW YORK

10013

No. 2

COLD


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For Currie Anne


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Sergio OrtizPoetry,

Emily Stuart if the woman

Good Weather for Fishing

Annalise Hagen Playing Cards

Ben Fama Boy

Cub

Katie Stallsmith Florets.

Phillip Polefrone The Silver Watch

Kimberly Southwick Near sonnet for promising you thesky not my body

Marieke Sterling Resurrecting Subjectivity: ProustsPresence in Minima Moralia

Maggie Owsley Restless

Linda Umans after Double Portrait

Jerimee Bloemeke Rising Sun

Eric Adamson Heron

Pelican

Christopher Bullard White Out

Sappho trans. by C. McPherson

Archilochus trans. by C. McPherson


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from Middle Englishtrans. by C. McPherson

Objectivist Erasure Conversation Between Five Poets:

Peter Gizzi

Elizabeth Willis

Christian Hawkey

Matvei Yankelevich

Piotr Sommer

Jane Laforge A is for Anonymous

Andrew E. Colarusso n. detritus (deterere)

C M Burroughs Nights Large Fears

Of A Larger Sequence

RoomUnpacking

The Last Word

On Impact

Quan Zhang Cold Humor


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Poetry,

Sergio Ortiz

petal moored to a glance,

as its mysterious shape

opened its body to lean

against the smile of an old drifter

awaiting absolution

on the church steps.

The tourist does not move,

his eyes inspect his own tanned

shoulders, then notice

a plastic bag to the right

of the unassisted

-well kept treasure,

intimacy of a home-

with suspicion.


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if the woman

Emily Stuart

.

If the woman is a stonebury her in blue water,If the woman is a kniferub her til she's sharp.

His voice is a rattle at the bottom of a tin cup.His arms are spurs, and rusted

where metal pinches leather.

He shakes like a drum in firelightwith the last fist still fresh on his back:

ama sa'ni, she grow curved low like a horseshoe,she pull stories from lamb wool, wrap upour toes in cotton words,

I go walk on her clouds when I sleep.

she say:Before the men with chins like rocks and the womenin gray come, blue flowers grew by blue water.

The men said the river was dry as their own mouths.Fools trying to drink a field.

he say:I drink a young grave.

If the woman is a wolf

wait til she sleeps,If the woman is a voicelistensay the words againmake them your own.


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Playing Cards

Annalise Hagen

1.

Weoracular queensmake prophecies

that fillothers butnot ourselves.

2.

Because we standin the twistof tunnels,

we becomeveils againsta flood.

3.

But in truth allwe can dois describe

the landscapesunder our feetfluid ones,

like the meltingof sandto glass.


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Boy

Ben Fama

Some days this house exudes a subtle whinnyingasshole says graveyards are slowly winningI bury my face deep in the front lawna family of magicians move onto the blocka sequence of colors erupts from their chimney

now anyone can walk among strangers towards daylightNorse creature, neighborhood fogstay here with us snow, stay here with us snow leopard


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Cub

I wake

press star to continuethe wind blows the wrong waynow you grow tigerssummer is a sance where

campfire loops endlesslyThe banner on the hill

it opens like a sail

the tiger gets hugeI saw you with it in a picturea child named Lazyheadthen a fortunate discovery

selling metal from the ski liftIf today is your birthday pleaseremove exactly 300 hairs from my beardIm dancing for fat rain

to press on the eveningso you may climb up and tearthe sky in half so it will lookthe way I have secretly wanted


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Florets.

Katie Stallsmith

The skeletal nature

of our family was, I

always thought, purposeful

Mothers mill

but a bright red canvas

hanging on the wall.The approach of death

must have scared

an egg into action:

after Jo went, children

came. They flowered

into our familymonuments.

Mother got knocked up,

not knocked down.


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The Silver Watch after Popa

Phillip Polefrone

Everything slides

on the side

of the Silver Watch

Wraps its edges

around its

edges

Eye whites run

down nose and mix

with teeth

But the back the

back is shineless

faceless

The watch is

infirm Its hand

trembles

at each step

Each stop though briefhangs

Leaf

on bough


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of the gap

where none

will go Even

the Silver Watch

will not

look

Too thin even

to roll off a cog

from the Silver Watch sitson the table

forgetting

its brooding brood

Feeling as though

its forgotten something

the Silver Watch

does not know

how long the cog

has been gone


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Near sonnet for promising you the sky not my body

Kimberly Southwick

midnight apocalypse violet, the snow

falls steady and dark, escaping heaven,

landing like piled down, winter pollen

covering this cityscape brownstone row.

when fire lights the mauve, the morning glow

seeps into a.m. hours, the sky ashen

then bursting flames, lighting three oh sevena burning cold my bare feet didnt know

until now, nude on a fire escape,

self-portrait for neighbors asleep, agape.


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Resurrecting Subjectivity:Prousts presence inMinima Moralia

Marieke Sterling


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Over the course of Theodor Adornos career, even as heinvestigated thoroughly contemporarytopics, Prousts writing served as asource of inspiration and enlightenment. Calling him an author whoseevery sentence put out of action some received opinion (207), Adornostated that Proust has played a central role in my intellectual economyfor decades. Adorno makes this fact clear in his eclectic philosophical

workMinima Moralia, in which he investigates the state of the modernindividual, and asserts that the contemporary human condition is blightedby the individuals loss of subjectivity. Adorno described In Search of Lost

Time as a monument to Prousts resistance against a subsuming formimposed from above, and, throughoutMinima Moralia, through allusionand direct citation, Adorno uses Prousts novel as a model for preservedsubjectivity. If we examine Minima Moralia more closely, it becomesapparent that, even where Proust is not explicitly referred to, many of theideas thematized inIn Search of Lost Time articulate or offer resolution tothe central problems Adorno identifies in modern society and culture. InMinima Moralia, Adorno refers to Proust in three key areas, whichtogether constitute the central structures that give individual life itsmeaning and form; he draws upon Prousts work in his analyses of socialrelationships, in his articulation of the role of memory and self-reflectionin subjective experience, and in his approach to the formulation ofsubjective knowledge and truth. Having identified the areas of life wheresubjectivity is most endangered, Adorno sees in In Search of Lost Time, ameans for combating domination and recovering lost subjectivity throughthe articulation and communication of the individual experience.

In Minima Moralia, one of Adornos central topics is what he calls thewithering of experience, (55) or the process by which the modernindividual is denied his own subjectivity and expelled from his own

subjective experiences. In the text, Adorno describes the subjectivedimension as the non-controversial aspect of things, their unquestionedimpression, the faade made up of classified data, (69) and pits thiselement against the objective, which he defines as anything that...engagesthe specific experience of a matter, casts off all ready-made judgments and


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substitutes related-ness to the object for the majority consensus (69).The two modes, Adorno asserts, operate in continual conflict, andidentifies the decay of the self (65) as a direct result of the ascendancy ofobjective values. He argues that this development drives the processes ofindustrialization and rationalization, which have turned the human subject

into the human object, and caused all aspects of life to becompartmentalized and broken down into their economic or objective

worth. According to Adorno, this atomization (130) is manifest bothacross society as a whole and in the relationships between people, as wellas within the individual himself. Adorno identifies the symptoms of thisphenomenon in society by the dehumanization and dominationperpetrated by people in personal and general terms. Within theindividual, it is internally evident in the shift from the privileging of thesubjective experience to the supremacy of the objective, by which

movement the individual is dominated and destroyed by mass society.Fighting against this phenomenon, Adorno argues for a return to whatProust calls theracine personelle, or personal root, of experience

In In Search of Lost Time, one of Prousts central topics is themachinations of social life. He describes in great detail the inner-

workings and devices of an idle upper class, documenting their excessesalong with their privations. Writing on Proust, Adorno asserts that, theframework of decline within which Proust quotes the portrait of hissociety, turns out to be that of a major social tendency (167). In this

statement, Adorno extends Prousts analyses and meditations on Parisianhigh society, suggesting that they describe a process of devolution that isstill ongoing, and which takes place across modern culture. In depictingthe subtle intricacies of social exchange, Prousts writing reveals what are,for Adorno, some of the essential systems through which human dignityand individuality are preserved. One of the central ways that thisapproach manifests itself inIn Search of Lost Time is through the emphasison elaborate social conventions. Adorno states that, to write offconvention as an outdated, useless and extraneous ornament is only toconfirma life of direct domination (37). Conventions, asserts Adorno,

have the function of upholding the basic impractical, unusable foundationof human relationships, and are symptomatic of a generalacknowledgement of the rights of the individual. Thus, they stand indirect opposition to what Adorno calls the practical orders oflife...[which] serve in a profit economy to stunt human qualities... (41).


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Under these terms, peoples relationships are disfigured by the dynamicsof giving and taking, discussion and implementation, control andfunction (41), and the ceremonial distance between individuals, where helocates the delicate connecting filigree of external forms in which alonethe internal crystallize (41) falls away. By abolishing these structures

under the pretext of honesty and equality, Adorno argues, the individual isdominated and objectified.

The dynamics of social life, its areas of weakness and tension, areillustrated still more explicitly in Prousts writing on love. Adornodescribes Prousts representation of love as an allergic account of what

was to befall all love. The exchange relationship that love partiallywithstood throughout the bourgeois age has completely absorbed it (167).In this statement, Adorno recasts Prousts depiction of love as a self-reflective act that precludes full recognition of or participation by the

desired object, as the common model for contemporary love, and, with theterm allergic, suggests the neurotic, almost physical character of Proustsaccount. He extends Prousts example still further, to include all forms ofsocial relationships, writing, the objective dissolution of society issubjectively manifested in the weakening of the erotic urge, no longer ableto bind together self-preserving monads (168). The decline of the eroticurge, he argues, is caused in part by the ascendancy of self-interest, whichseeks personal advancement above all else. ThroughoutIn Search of LostTime, Proust returns repeatedly to the notion of the self as the supreme

medium of experience, suggesting not only the world around us, but alsothose we love, are simply a vast, vague arena in which to exteriorize ouremotions. The notion of exchange, now at the heart of humanrelationships, prohibits true attachments from forming, he argues, for,tenderness between people is nothing other than awareness of thepossibility of relations without purpose (41). Under the contemporarymodel of gainful romance, Adorno asserts, people have ceased to beregarded as individuals, but have become objects. As objects, they have

value only as long as they are not owned, but, once wholly a possession, aperson is no longer really looked at (79), and are then free to be traded

away for something of equal or greater worth. In Adornos articulation ofthe material dynamics of amorous relationships, he often directly refers toideas found inIn Search of Lost Time. The concepts of objectification andpossession are apparent when, in The Captive, Proust writes, the sameperson is alternately winged and wingless. Afraid of losing her, we forget


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all others. Sure of keeping her, we compare her with those others whomwe at once prefer to her. As in AdornosMinima Moralia, Proust speaksabout romantic relationships in terms of exchange, suggesting thatanothers worth rests in their possessionor in their resistance topossessionrather than in their specific and unique qualities.

If Prousts examination of the individual in society acts as one sourceof inspiration for Adorno, it is equally true that Prousts exploration of theindividuals subjectivity in isolation offered Adorno another avenue ofreflection. The role of memory in experience and in thought is critical toboth Proust and Adornos conceptions of subjectivity. Throughout thenovel, the author returns to the idea of thememoire involuntaire, thespontaneous interpenetration of the present with the past. Reflecting onthe dimensions of experience, Proust writes, It seems that events arelarger than the moment in which they occur and cannot be entirely

contained in it. Certainly they overflow into the future through thememory we retain of them, but they demand a place also in the time thatprecedes them. For both Proust and Adorno, the past is always present,and, as a result, is always changing. This instability, Adorno argues,performs a real function; in preventing memories from being fixed, thisdynamic preserves their integral nature. As soon as memories are namedand located, they are externalized and objectified, and are no longer truly apart of individual consciousness, but only possessed by it. This differenceis critical to Adorno, for, as he asserts in Minima Moralia, it is precisely

this interpenetration that is so vital to the functioning subjectiveconsciousness. Currently, he writes, memory is tabooed as unpredictable,unreliable, irrational. The resulting historical asthma culminates in thedissolution of the historical dimension of experience (122). It is thishistorical dimension, now so endangered, which gives experience meaning.It allows for the elements of the irrational specific to the individual toparticipate in the thought process, without which knowledge becomesstrictly a matter of pure repetition, a form of absolute tautology (123).He also suggests, in employing the term historical asthma, the diseasedand frenziedcharacter of experience without memory. Writing further on

the importance of memory, Adorno goes on to cite Prousts stance as anexample, articulating Prousts principle as the conception that thepresent, immediacy, is constituted only through the medium of memory(166). It is across memory that experiences acquire value; deprived of this,

Adorno argues, life would be meaningless, recast into a timeless


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succession of shocks, interspersed with empty, paralyzed intervals (54).Thus, within individuals and throughout society as a whole, the death ofthe historical dimension has damaged experience and robbed it ofmeaning.

The element of memory is also vital to the reflective process, another

central theme in Prousts writing, and crucial, Adorno argues, to both theconstruction of individual experience and the acquisition of knowledge.Reflective thought constitutes a large proportion ofIn Search of Lost Time,far outstripping scenes of narrative action. For Prousts narrator, thingsand people do not exist...until they assume in [his] imagination anindividual existence. The privileging of imagination over material factamounts to the intervention of the subjective in a persons individualexperience.Adorno describes this intervention in several ways. Thereflective posture requires a degree of distance from its object, which

allows for what Adorno calls the self-detachment from the weight of thefactual (127), thus liberating man from the obligation of merelyreproducing being, [so that he] can...determine it (127). In thisstatement, Adornos words strongly echo Prousts assertions that we onlyknow what we are obliged to recreate in thought, and that there is noknowledge...except of oneself. Observation counts for very little, instressing the constructive relationship of the individual to knowledge. Bydistancing the thinking subject from the contemplated object, bothProust and Adorno use reflection to aid the rejection of prescribed

notions in favor of arriving at personal truth. For Adorno, however, thissubjective truth does not invalidate the conceptual domain of objectivefact, but effectively re-contextualizes it. Roger Foster, in his critical workentitled Adorno: The Recovery of Experience, articulates this fact in statingthat, in Adornos terms, self-reflection is not a canceling of thoseschemes in a return to the cognitive fullness of the subject. Rather, itdiscloses the distance between our concept and genuine cognition.Genuine cognition, Foster suggests, is necessarily self-reflective, and thusoperates through the application of memory, which is to say, through theactive intervention of individual experience in processing information.

Affirming the subjective, irrational element of the thought process,Adorno states that knowledge comes to us through a network ofprejudices, opinions, innervations, self-corrections, presuppositions andexaggerations...[through the] medium of experience (80), and reflection,in allowing for the intervention of emotion and memory in analytical


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thinking, acknowledges and promotes the importance of the individualtruth. Prousts memoire involuntaire plays an important role in this process,acting as a means of enlightenment that is deeply subjective, at onceinternal to memory and outside of cognition, and entails what Fosterdescribes as the lighting up in a flash of what cannot be said with ...the

tools of intelligence. Thus, the self-reflective act, transpiring acrossmemory, contributes to the formulation of a subjective body ofknowledge.

Adorno represents the active and sustained pursuit of truth as criticalto the state of preserved subjectivity, and finds a model for this process inProusts writing. Throughout In Search of Lost Time, Proust warns againstthe dangers ofhabitude, which he calls a second nature that prevents usfrom knowing[the first] nature. In this usage, habit can be understoodin experiential terms, as the practice of routine, or in intellectual terms, as

the acceptance and application of received ideas and standardizedconcepts. Proust uses the expression second nature to indicate both theartificiality of the conceptual world, and its remove from the world ofsubjective experience. He advocates, then, for the active construction ofan individual body of knowledge, which penetrates the overlyingconceptual layer of reality to achieve subjective truth. Foster summarizes

Adornos interpretation ofhabitude in Proust as the weight of certainhistorical developments that expels the experienced subject fromcognition. The preservation of the subjective experience, then, is

contingent upon the active rejection of habit in favor of truth, a factAdorno articulates in stating that, the compulsion to adapt prohibits onefrom listening to reality. InNotes to Literature, Adorno analyzes the roleplayed by truth in In Search of Lost Time, depicting truth as critical topersonal happiness and fulfillment, asserting that, because [the narrator]is not satisfied with any happiness other than complete happiness, hisneed for happiness becomes a need for full truth. The other happiness

Adorno refers to in this statement is the deceptive happiness that isfounded upon habit and governed by convention, in short, a state ofdomination characterizedby the renunciation of subjectivity. The full

truth, or individuated truth, that Adorno references ultimately preventsthe subject from achieving happiness, because, as he writes, such truth...ispain, disappointment, knowledge of the false life. Full truth forces itspossessor to confront the break between subjective experience and the


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conceptual domain, and thus to acknowledge the state of domination inwhich the subject now lives.

In addition to advocating for the value of pursuing knowledge,the two works also address the character and function of knowledge itself,emphasizing the importance of detail, and reject the accepted value of

standard proportions. In Minima Moralia, Adorno asserts that, the senseof proportion entails a total obligation to think in terms of the establishedmeasures and values (72). In rejecting these proportions, he also deniesthe accepted division between the universal and particular, and citesProust as demonstrating the interpenetration of each. Thus, the insistentattention to detail that Proust maintains throughout In Search of Lost Timeassumes political import under Adornos critical eye, a fact that heexpresses explicitly in calling Prousts writing not at all esoteric butrather democratic. Adorno addresses the importance of the specific in

terms of resistance to domination, asserting that, it is just this passing onand being unable to linger, this tacit assent to the primacy of the generalover the particular, which constitutes not only the deception ofidealism...but also its inhumanity (74), and going on to say that theconcept of relevance is determined by organizational considerations, thatof topicality measured by the most powerful objective tendency of theday (125). Underlying both of these statements is the sense of efficiencyand urgency driving modern, industrialized culture, and against which

Adorno poses the idea of lingering, of abiding with something over time.

Proust writes on the importance of detail in similar terms, calling for areclamation of what he refers to as the dchets of experience, bestunderstood as the detritus produced by the transition from experiential toempirical modes. In affirming the worth of lifesdchets, Proust speaks outagainst objectivity and empiricism, and elevates the undervalued elementsof subjective experience. Prousts writing is marked by his absorption with

what could be called insignificant details, from which his imaginationtakes flight. Reflecting upon this, Proust asks, is not a singlefact...sufficient to enable the experimenter to deduce a general law which

will reveal the truth about thousands of analogous parts? Adorno,

likewise, believes that elevating general or objective truth is a form ofdomination, and that truth can only be arrived at through the patienceand perseverance of lingering with the particular (77). In this way, heargues, a body of knowledge can be developed whose authority rests in itsdiversity and in its particularity, so defying what he calls the overbearing


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audience, and brings each to a higher state of consciousness. In In Searchof Lost Time, through such artworks as the paintings of Elistir and themusic of Vinteuil, subjective experience is preserved and communicated,in its particularity and its universality. Faithful transmission of theindividual experience engenders unity and humanity across society; in

reading Proust, Adorno states, we are restore[d] the universality we feelcheated of.

Though Adornos vision for redemption through art iscomplicated by the inherent difficulty of communicating subjectiveexperience, he sees in Prousts technique a means for doing so. Languagedenies, and in fact suppresses, the distance between concept andcognition. The difficulty, then, lies in expressing subjective experience

while preserving its specificity, or as Foster puts it, in order to disclosethat distance, language must be able to express or evoke what it cannot

say; to say it would be to abolish distance. Thus, the artist is chargedwith performing a textual slight-of-hand, conveying meaning throughindirect channels. One way that Proust circumvents the problems posedby communication limited to externals, common to all and of no interestis through the overwhelming plentitude and specificity of the informationthat he provides his readers; through these details, he creates a text thatmanages to be at turns scientifically precise, deeply personal, anduniversally resonant. Adorno, exploring Prousts literary technique,observed that it is as though under the mask of autobiography Proust

were giving out the secrets of every person while at the same timereporting on something extremely specialized, on incommensurable,extremely subtle and private experiences. The paradox that Adornoidentifies in this statement, between commonality and a state ofsubjectivity that is fundamentally unique andin a senseincontrovertibly incommunicable, is also conveyed through Prousts use ofmetaphor. Metaphor works against the rigidities of language; byexternalizing meaning into an alternative location, it re-contextualizes it,and incorporates an extant entity, familiar to the reader, in the formationof personal expression. In doing so, the writer enlists the readers

subjective understanding and experiences in the interpretation of the text,while at the same time inflecting his statement with subtleties too fine fordirect expression. In this way, as Foster notes, metaphor resists habitualclassification by redirecting language toward what the subjectexperiences. Proust also demonstrates this resistance to standard


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formations of communication in the configuration of his text. In Search ofLost Time is marked by its cyclical, self-reflective structure, in which thepast and the present freely commingle. Prousts departure from a linear,rational and neatly ordered construction has the effect of forcing upon thereader the terms of the narrators subjective state, while at the same time

resisting the organization imposed by normative forces. The potentcombination of high detail, vivid metaphor and loose structure lead

Adorno to state that in reading Proust, one feels addressed by it as if byan inherited memory. With the term inherited memory, Adornoarticulates the paradoxical specificity and universality of the text,describing it as an experienced object whose origins are both internal andexternal.

Inspired by Proust, Adorno applies some of his literarytechniques inMinima Moralia, and uses these methods to circumvent the

issues posed by communication in order to create a text designed tocombat the problems surrounding annihilated subjectivity. Adornodescribes his approach as the attempt to present aspects of a sharedphilosophy from the standpoint of subjective experiences, (18) and tothat end, he borrows from Proust at the structural, stylistic, and materiallevel. In the same way that In Search of Lost Time defies rational order, andin this way testifies to the essential irrationality of the subjectivedimension,Minima Moralia is loosely constructed, following associativerelations rather than logical progression, and marked by obscure allusions

and self-contradictions. What Adorno calls the disconnected and non

-

binding character of the [books] form, the renunciation of explicittheoretical cohesion, (18) is also evident in the works content. LikeProust, Adorno finds material for analyses in a wide variety of subjects,

which range widely in scope and scale, and which are located at everycultural register. His brief passages act as points in a constellation ofcriticism, which, as Adorno writes, without ever pretending to becomplete or definitive...[are] all intended to mark out points of attack orto furnish models for a future exertion of thought. (18) Through theincomplete character of its content, Minima Moralia engages the critical

faculties of its readers, and directs them to avenues of reflection. Adornoalso circumvents the hierarchical and reductive nature of linguisticcommunication through stylistic devices, specifically with the use ofmetaphorical language. Adorno, like Proust, employs metaphor toincorporate a fine web of nuance into his writing, and to involve the


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subjective understanding of his audience in the construction of meaning.Thus, the book is rife with poetic alliances such as that between theeffervescing of mineral water and male violence, or between crystallinestructure and the interior self. In a style that is at once lyrical andanalytical, and didactic without being definitive, Adorno pits his

subjective insights against the normative tendencies dominating modernsociety and culture.

Prousts writing acted as a source of inspiration throughoutAdornos intellectual career, and the influence ofIn Search of Lost Time isapparent inMinima Moralia materially, structurally, stylistically, andconceptually. Adorno uses Prousts novel as a model for intactsubjectivity, and finds in his writing a technique to resist theautomatization and mechanization of his own thought. This mechanizedstate, a product of contemporary culture, is manifest not only within

individuals, but also between them, and across society as whole. Thus,Adorno references Proust in his examination of social dynamics, in hisexploration of the function of memory and self-reflection in individualexperience, and in his approach to the construction and character ofknowledge. To these areas, Adorno locates the structures that sustain ordismantle subjectivity, and, having identified the threats contemporaryculture and society directs against the individual, he sees in Prousts novela method for resistance, through the examination and communication ofsubjective experience. Though they appear, superficially, to be temporally

and materially distant, a deep affinity binds Minima Moralia toIn Search ofLost Time; in their concern with the articulation of subjective experience,the two books transcend genre.


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Adorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Trans. E.N.F. Jephcott. New York: Verso, 2005. Print.

Adorno, Theodor.Notes to Literature, Vol. II. Trans. Rolf Tiedemann. New York:Columbia University Press, 1992. Print.

Adorno, Prisms. Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen and Samuel Weber. USA: MITPress, 1983. Print.

Foster, Roger. Adorno: The Recovery of Experience. New York: State University ofNew York Press, 2007. Print.

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time. Trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and TerenceKilmartin. USA: Random House, 1992. Print.


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REST-

-LESSMaggie Owsley


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AfterDouble Portrait(1985-1986)by Lucian Freud

Linda Umans

As a day sleeper too

I enjoy the proximity of caring company

sometimes draped across my forehead.

Who dreams next to you, connects.

Strangers on Indian trains have been influences.

Deep rest can be elusive

as can the memory of conversations like

Help me see the joke of itTwo mammals walked into a bar.


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Rising Sun

Jerimee Bloemeke

Twas raining and

the sky the face

of an undead without

eyes as a plane

passes overhead

dropping its shadow

on the forehead the cloudslow lower themselves

than the spirit of a man

we met at a gas station

in Manning south carolina

the only reason

we went there 'cause

they had a Taco bell

we were hungry and had to pissand the man was there in front

he was more like a student

that we both knew let us

call him L so L had stolen

the limo he drove

for a guy in New jersey

and drove it down 'til it broke

down and L was broke too

he told us he'dbeen kicked out of the house

he'd been living in with his mom

he had on a hound's tooth

coat a plaid shirt and navy


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pants with a bleach stain at the cuff

and his shoes were black nikes

L didn't have any cigarettes

he was bumming mine the whole drive

telling us more about his situationhow he'd never seen the south

but when he was small

and asking about what it's like

to sleep in the woods

he said he couldn't that night

parked on the side of i-95

with all the noises he was hearing

being drunk and wild

L said he'd heard allkinds of noises from animals

but didn't know what kinds

perhaps we could've told him

if he'd been able to imitate it

like the one time I tried to

in the pizza place in New york

a girl was telling me

she heard screeches of sorts

on top of her roof in Yonkers

I think that's where she lived

and I told her what it could be

like a possum or a raccoon

though not really knowing

myself not knowing

what sorts of animals

besides pigeons and rats

roam wild in citieswhich's where I knew L

from some essay class

he was the only black in the class

one of the few blacks at the school


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but then as his story goes

he stopped being able

to pay the tuition

so he started working this limo service

but not like stretch limos for celebritiesand rich folks but the ones

they call the gypsy cabs in brooklyn

usually black cars Lincolns or

some times a Ford crown victoria

they're always beeping at you

when you walk down the street

or get off the subway

so anyway that's what L did

least 'til his mom kicked him outso he told us more about it

how a cop pulled him over

since he was speeding

and L told the cop a story about

how he had dropped off a guy

in some forgotten town

and how the cop was so nice to L

was considerate was cool

acting as if he'd believed L's story

when the punch line of it was that

L hadn't even gotten to the town yet

the one he told the cop he'd just dropped the guy off in

but the cop let him go anyway

despite L being obviously drunk

and I thought

that it wasn't on account

of the cop justbeing nice and so

L tells us about how he was in the woods

sitting between sky and I

in the van on a cooler


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constantly asking us where he could ash

and us telling him over and over

again that it was cool

to ash on the floor

look at the floorwho gives a fuck

and how L was in the woods

and it was dark and hearing the noises

of the woods as something

he'd never heard before

him saying this in an awed type of tone

not necessarily as if the sounds

in the woods were tranquil or something

but as if they'd changed something inside himthe sounds

being volatile and new and wild

and he's saying how

he tried to start a camp fire

asking us if we'd ever done one

and us telling him of course we had

we do it all the time

camp out and roast marshmallows

hot dogs all that kind of shit

like smoking spliffs beneath the stars

ain't nothing quite like it

L said true

and one of us asked him

what he was doing out in the woods

L said his car'd broken down

something like that

though it was later revealed thatthe car had run out of gas

and like I said he didn't have much cash

and so he must've thought

what the fuck and went into the woods


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why not he'd never been there

before never been in any woods

or any forest

nothing and so he did say though

that being out in the wildernesslet a man see his true self

something like that

and then that once he'd been discovering all these things

about his own self was when he heard the dogs

barking back where his car was at parked on the side of thehighway

and the flashlights of the cops

and the cops' cars' red and blue and white lights

and then soon after thator maybe it wasn't soon

but some time after that it wasn't clear

but there were then the orange lights

of a tow truck

and by that time L decided he'd walk back

and he met the cops and they put him in one of their cars

and drove him to that place in Manning

where we'd met him

he told us thatonce he'd gotten to Manning

he immediately applied for a job

at the Waffle house

that small kind of place

a restaurant that has a black and yellow decor

and white orbs hanging from the ceiling

over the tables as the primary source

of light

it's the kind of place one goes

before setting out on a long journey

that's expected to be pretty

noteworthy or at least a time


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or an experience but who's to say

anything about experience or life these days

certainly not I

but L was sure he'd be stuck around Manning

for he didn't know how longand we started making jokes about

Peyton manning the football quarterback

currently the best in the league

having just lost the super bowl

to the new orleans saints

so that meant that the town

called Manning must've sucked too

and L told us again about the woods

and how he saw the stars and the skyand probably the moon

how he saw all them trees in the dark

and he'd drank water from a creek

L asked me if I'd ever done that

I said sure and then I asked him

if the water he drank tasted good

and he said yeah

it didn't have any particles in it

it tasted fresh

and he asked what kinds of trees those were

so I told him cypresses but he said

no the red ones

and I said I didn't know the name for those

and I recall now how he only had his cell phone for light

how that must've made it difficult

for him to see

but at least he had thathe told us he only went to that gas station we met him at

because they had a Popeye's

and he only had ten bucks

and he figured if he was to get himself a meal


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that he'd want it to be good

so he got himself some fried chicken

he told us

all the while him smoking my Pall malls

and periodically excusing himselfto take a nap in the back of the van

laying himself out flat

on his stomach

every so often saying something

about the song we had on

he said "No Rain" was his jam

but whose jam isn't that song

I thought he also liked

that one Grails songhe said it was like space music

and that he played the guitar

and his guitar was at his brother's place

which's where we were taking him

somewhere in Orlando

but we told him we'd drop him off somewhere close

since it would be out of our way

to go all the way to Orlando

where we told him was Disney world

and all that shit

but he was saying how

we ought to form a band

and call it space music

how he wants to write songs

and drive a truck

seeming naive but fearless

until we were nearing hisstop when we told him to call his brother up

and so he did

and his brother said he was going to Full sail

and didn't have access to his car


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so we told L he could probably catch a ride

with some college kids going down 4

and when we got to the gas station where we were gonna leave him

sky and I took pisses

in a badly maintained restroomwhere all the toilets were corroded

had turned green like the statue of liberty

like once the bathroom was full of copper

like a jewelry box with puddles on the floor

and the writings on the wall we didn't read

the permanent marker scrawlings

sprawled all across the mirror

and the hand dryer that didn't work

and the soil covered walllike the broken bones

the lost skeletons

of vagrants I went into the gas station

to buy myself some snacks

and a soda and L was making himself a sign

out of a pamphlet he had

been carrying around in a pocket

of his coat jacket

him borrowing a pen from the cashier

him thanking us profusely for the lift

me telling him that he was lucky we ran into him

and that

when he felt his luck running out

that that was when someone was going to come by

and pick him up

at that time when he will

have lost all hopethat that was when his brother would come through

riding on all kinds of graces

me not knowing whether that was true

or not but having to tell him something


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and sky and I drove off

leaving him in what looked like

the middle of nowhere

a black speck in the fluorescent distance

and sky telling me he felt badas we drove on our way

and me feeling so too

under that lightning sky

heated up with low pressure

and those low clouds

and the rain

remembering how I shook

before our trip started

still in the citybeing so nervous without knowing why

seeing then

driving up ahead

off in a circle of grass and palm trees

emergency lights

brown tire tracks through the green

green grass lit up by streetlights

and the pick up truck

smashed headfirst

into the palm tree

both so still as we passed by

having just missed the accident

there being no way that the driver

survived and my eyes burned

thinking about L

hearing the engines

of the plane overhead putting its shadowon everything hiding the moon

behind its smoke and killing the wind

from the face of an undead

blinded sky


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bruised by its own clouds

in purples and stale greens

like mold

like the lesions on a corpse

like the way blood getskept underneath the skin

but trying to get out or go somewhere

and how it can't be forgotten

how before we dropped off L

he told us that the night before

he'd tried to kill himself

and how I bit my tongue

and sky asked him how he tried to do it

but I forgot what he said


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Heron

Eric Adamson

white curling heron on my breath,

speed of fingers sewing deft,

fish to needle mouth it sips,

come to me scale sides of my lips,

white heron curling up with death.


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Pelican

of too much fish, of too much flight,

of too much wings and beak on sky,

of rotting in the sand and brine,

here is pelican, mouth too wide.


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White Out

Cristopher Bullard

Whorf declared that the EskimoDistinguish seals by name and know

A hundred different words for snow

Because they see varietiesOf snow as sets of propertiesDistinct as we have birds and bees.

And yet, up north, a frozen senseOf seasonal experience,Has left their verbs in present tense.

Thus, one is going, not gone.One out of sight is going on

And may return to us, anon.

I envy Eskimos. For me,

Verb endings are finality.My conjugates conclude ed.

By grammars rule, I must inferThat as we flip the calendarThose things thatare, will soon be were.

To sum, in this life sentence, ImFull stop in the language of time,

Aware of how our paradigm

Of endings strands us,status quo,With chilly words, alike as snow,

To name the things we cannot know.


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Sappho

Original Translation by C. McPherson

A host of cavalry, the infantry,the navy: some say that these are the loveliest sightson this black earth. Not I--I say its what you love.

And its easy to make this

clear to all: far surpassing humankindbeautiful Helen left herown surpassingly noble man

And sailed for Troy withouta thought for her child or elders

with one who led her astray(with ease).Which reminds me of Anactoria.

Shes not here. But Id trade

the sight of all the chariotsand foot soldiers of Lydiajust to see her lovely walk and radiant face.


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Archilochus


I rely on my spear to earn my bread

I rely on my spear Ismaric wine to drink

While leaning on it. I rely on my spear.


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Middle English, 13th-14th Century


Whan ich se on rode

Jhesu mi lemman,

and beside him stonde

Marie an Johan,

and his rig y-swongen,

and his side y-stongen,for the love of man,

wel ow ich to wepen

and sinnes forleten,

Yif ich of love can,

yif ich of love can,

yif ich of love can.

When I see on the cross

Jesus my sweetheart

And standing beside him

Mary and John,

And his back scourged

And his side pierced

For the love of humanity,

Then I should certainly weepAnd Forsake my sins

If I know anything of love,

If I know anything of love,

If I know anything of love.


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AN OBJECTIVIST ERASURE CONVERSATION BETWEEN FIVE POETS

PIOTR SOMMER

PETER GIZZI

CHRISTIAN HAWKEY

ELIZABETH WILLIS

MATVEI YANKELEVICH


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A dog barks threateningly in the background.

I think thats where all the work is being done. These are the books that are being read.At least in my experience. I think its the work thats had an impact. You as a publisherMatvei, of Ugly Duckling, are experiencing that, right? By producing many of these othertexts

A smaller dog growls in the foreground. Matvei is hesitant to respond. He laughs.

Matvei: I cant really say yet! I think youre all straight-on.

Piotr: But, when I was coming to the states for the first time in the early eighties, I waslucky enough to be able to travel from campus to campus quite a bit. And it seemed to methat there was no one around on campuses who knew about the objectivists. When Imentioned Charles Reznikoff, they said who? Maybe there is something in the foreignpoint of view when looking at something like American poetry from anthologies. I wasworking in the late seventies when I bumped into Reznikoff. He, instantly, seemed to be

so exciting. Every sentence seemed to me so exciting. Then the New York School becameso important and then youd try to drag them into your own language just to see if theressomething as vivid as you hear it in English. So maybe the contamination of the two, theNew York School and the Objectivists, became rather very quickly assimilated in Poland.In France I know of the Objectivists more than the New York School.

The mechanisms of an old window roil the conversation.

Because it was such an early development for me, now it seems to me they must havebeen completely assimilated in the states. And this is why I was asking about new fatherfigures, like Spicer. Theres this constant urge to unearth the people who have beenneglected.

The window is finally lodged open. A zipper is ripped apart.

Apart from Spicer, would you say there are other new names?

Elizabeth Willis enters the conversation.

Willis: Well I think some of the less read members of, say, the New York School, likeBarbara Guest and James Schuyler, I think have a huge effect. I was just thinking actuallythat what were talking about in a way, is the positive version of the influence ofinstitutions like the fact that Robert Creeley taught in a University and his perspectivewas entirely that we should be changing the institution from the inside out, not that weshould accept or adapt to the culture of academic institutions. There is a generation ofpeople who then came through, in the eighties, who had a sense of social and aestheticresponsibility to teach little known works that matter. In my experience, the studentswho are now in their late teens, early twenties really respond to the Objectivists and allsorts of new American poetry in ways that are different from what I got as a student.

Piotr: Whats the difference?


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Willis: Well, basically, in my university education I only got the Berryman, Lowell, PlathtraditionTheodore Roethke. So to actually discover a work that was outside of thatnexus was a revelation. I felt desperate to find other people who were reading thosebooks. I think that is kind of characteristic of our whole generation. We came to thatwork and it changed us, now were the ones who are trying to pass it on.

Gizzi: If you think of Creeley, what was his model? He came from Black Mountain, whichis an alternative institutional space. This generated a whole new group nexus. Creeleywas close to Zukofsky and really responsible for making that work available, as well asthe other objectivistslike Olsen. It was an alternative model of pedagogy and of whatlearning spaces could be as a kind of cooperative. This tradition goes on; its not like itsnew. Then, Creeleys great predecessor was William Carlos Williams. I think of booksthat have had influenceI always like to call it the quiet revolution of 1923which wasSpring and AllandHarmonium. These two stateside modernists. Because 22 is Ulyssesand The Wasteland. But, these two stateside gentlemen who had proper jobs and wrotein the evenings or during their free time,Spring and Allis probably one of the mostinfluential books of verse structure. I mean, I can look at Christians work, your work, mywork and its like Williams line lives everywhere.

Hawkey jumps in.

Hawkey: Its truly variable!

Elizabeth agrees.

Gizzi: Whether someone has read him or not, Williams is alive and signifying. Its like1923 in France, 300 copies published by Robert McElmancontact editions. That book isvastly influential noweven by people who dont read Williams or Stevens. Its hard tosettle.

Piotr: Right.

Piotr ruminates briefly on a new question, or perhaps on returning to an old one.

Elizabeth, you were saying that there is a difference between what you were getting out ofit and what the students are getting. My intuition would be that, because of some of thealternative modes were new for you and for them, they are pretty much becoming part ofthe mainstream. Am I making sense?

Willis: Yeah

Piotr: Are they looking at it with impatience? No?

Elizabeth: I havent seen impatience. Ive been thinking about how the American politicallandscape effects what people turn to in literature. My parents were part of the WorldWar II generation with all this optimism. Yet I cam of age in the Regan and Bush years.So I think that one thing that is really durable and easily translatable about theobjectivists is their combination of political engagament and really sophisticated


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aesthetics. I dont think students find it troubling or problematicwhat was the word youused?

Piotr: Impatience! I didnt really mean impatientMaybe, a little bit more natural tohave and because of that it wouldnt generate as much interest as it did in your case.

Gizzi: But forty years later these texts are now canonicalthese are venerable works. Iremember I visited your class at Pratt when you did the lectures on Spicer. It was likechapter and verse to them. These are accepted texts now.

Hawkey: I dont really think its a question of something suddenly accepted becomingfamiliar and then rejected. I think its a sifting in which certain groups and communitiesand traditions of writing rise to the top and then, I think, stay there. Thats the way I seeit anyway. But I like what you said about historical circumstances influencingcommunities because the next community influenced by the Objectivists was sort of, ofcourse, the Language school. Of course, they were dealing with both the Cold War andthe Vietnam War, so it makes complete sense that the Objectivists would be a model forthem. Although, maybe the difference with the Language school was that they were alsoassimilating a kind of post-structuralism in American poetry and language. So those twodove-tailed in an interesting way. So it makes sense, again, that a newer generationwould be drawing from both the Language school and the Objectivists given the fact thatwe live in a country that is currently engaged in two wars, on top of globalization andempire and everything else that young students of our generation have to pay attentionto.

Gizzi: Or they dont.Thats the problem.

Piotr: When you do the series, when you have them translated, did you commission themwith the idea thatAmerican English needs them? I mean, whats the rationale?

Matvei: So for some things, Prigov, Rubenstein, these were texts in Russian poetry that Ireally wanted to see in English and I happened to get manuscripts of translations of thoseI liked and worked with by Phil Metris and Chris Madison respectively. That was more ofaI knew there would be affinities. For instance Charles Bernstein was really into theRubenstein and saw affinities with Bob Grenier and other American traditions. Samewith Perloff. I knew that there was something American poets would dig in Rubensteinswork. With Prigov its more complicated. In a way, its working on a micro-level with thelanguage. Were going to do a larger edition of Prigov who passed away two years ago.But well see; I dont know what the effect will be. I think its more difficult to translate. Itcertainly changes in that instance. Its an effect on the language and its a question of

whether the effect he sought to have on Soviet Russian language, if that can be translatedin anyway in an American context. The series is sort of ad-hoc. As it goes on, it becomessomething, but it really depends on happenstance, on who hears about the seriesImean, there are so few small presses focusing on a specific area. Now there are moresmall presses doing translation, but its hard to say what this series will become. Theresa lot of good poets that weve put out in English that may not have any effect. Thats


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simply the market, an issue of distribution, and of institutions, and whats in place andhow do you hear about what someone is doing in another language and context. Forinstance, the new thing in Kosovo is hard to parallel with the new thing in America. Itmight read very differently for an American reader. Is this oppositional to someaesthetic? What is the approach of this poet to their language, to their tradition? That isvery hard to translate. I mean, you can have prefaces and so forth, but when you just

show the work its very hard to know what these people are responding to, what are theirinfluences, why are they making these choices, what do those choices mean in thatcontext? In English they may not mean anything or they may seem traditional or youmight not see how theyre attempting to do something different.

Gizzi: Or how theyre also electing to go back to the political landscape in reality oftheir culture.

Someone sighs.

Gizzi: Christian brought up the idea that were presently engaged in two wars and I canspeak to this in a bunch of ways and about the awareness of it, but part of the EasternEuropean series is that many of the people youre publishing were in some way dissident.

Piotr: Dissident aesthetically

Gizzi: Maybe, yeah aesthetically and maybe

Matvei: Some were historically, yeslike Moran, Prigov, Rubenstein. Some of themcertainly had their problems with the state because of what they were writing. But part ofmy interest in the series is to present Eastern Europe not solely through that Cold Warangle. I think its been detrimental in some ways, to the way these texts are readtheOberiu for example. The seventies, eighties readings of those texts, I think, were skewedin some aspects. Because of this notion of what the Eastern European poet should be. Wewere talking about Adam Zagajewski and what it is that people are in tune withbecause

its what they expect. Certain tropes, certain subject matter, a certain way of dealing withpolitics. There could be so many Eastern European poet unrepresented by Americanpublishing because they dont fit the mold.

Gizzi: But coming back to this idea of writing out of the condition of war, not about war,but out of it. A few things come to mind. You use the word empire in relation to America,and one of the ways its imperial is its language. Its already an institutionthe language.Its like the old linguist joke, whats the difference between a language and a dialect? Thedifference between a language and a dialect is: a language is a dialect that has an armyand a navy.

Some breathy chuckles float throughthe discussion.

So, already to deal in the American language is to be already involvedthrough syntax Im connected to Liz, but also to George Bush or whoever. So

its kind of unavoidable that confrontation. I remember editing o-blk there was in tri-quarterly a beautiful piece by a young Creeley on Black Mountainthe review. Creeleywrote to Ezra Pound, then in St. Elizabeths, asking how he could go about starting amagazine. Pound said that a magazine behaves much the same way a poem behaves;


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Matvei: The trend of the way translation is talked about in terms of mainstreampublishing, reviewing and so forth, is really about universality. Thats the trope ofcontemporary translation. Basic ideas of translation now are that the translation shouldmake it seem like it was written in English; the translation is somehow transparent andnot in a Benjamin sense. Why certain texts are chosen is usually based on theirtranslatabilitywhich seems to mean does it have universal meaning? So instead of

thinking of the local or the untranslatable which has a peculiar effect on the languagethe Benjaminian version of translation is probably against several thousand years, oreven the Romantics tradition comes to a head with ideas of translation from Cicero toDryden. And so you have this new moment for about 100 years in translation talkingabout pre-Raphaelites and Victorian translation and archaic translation where the textand language is really strange in the target language. I think, for whatever reasons, theyhave to deal with mainstream trends of literary culture in America. To the point wherereviews of translation are one line on its readability. If it sounds at all odd, itstranslators and thats badso, with some of the new translations were seeing differentapproaches on tiny presses. So were in a time where this idea of the universal isunfortunately occluding alternative manners of translation that could be productive forthe English language and American poetry. I think poets are butting up against a trendthats big, all-encompassing against foreignness in the translation, that doesnt want tosee other possibilities for English.

Hawkey: I also just likethe ideawhich Aaron Murray talks about of there being noequivalence between any two languages, yet in the act of translation, that gap is somehowcrossed. The gap I think is just maybe a space of total possibility. Rosemary Waldropsterm for that is so beautiful in its Dickinsonian accuracy and brevity is a lavish absence.She writes about that in her memoir of translating Chavez.

Gizzi: The other term she uses which is also Dickinsonian is gap gardening. It works inrelation to this gap youre speaking of. She also said wherever I go, I always have thewrong accent.

Hawkey: Maybe thats a part of what it means to be an American poet.

Gizzi: Yeah.

Hawkey: I dont know that its necessarily particularly American, but to be a poetandagain, I dont want to romanticize the figure of the poet as a marginal figure, but thetruth is in a late capitalist society, poetry is beyond marginalizedI do feel poets arenomads moving in the outskirts of what might be called an establishment and at thesame time never speaking, but finding ways to accent difference within an establishmentthat is constantly trying to homogenize and globalize and erase difference. So to me,whether thats being an American poet, a Polish poet, a Russian poet the emphasis onpreserving those differences and even resisting the use of those differences used by

commercial establishments as a way of glossing over what is really happeningwhich istotal homogenization is an added layer that we have to pay attention to at some level.

Piotr: But that doesnt have anything to do with you being an American poet. Because itactually is global.

Willis: Whatis global?


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Piotr: Well, the mechanism that you were describing. So what is American in yourwriting?

Hawkey: I dont know. I can talk about Ashbery as being a particularly American poet,because his accents are so manifold and deeply imbedded in, not just English idiolects

and sociolects but, American idiolects and sociolects. His proliferation of idiomacities iswhat makes him representative of the diversity of American language, but also using thatin an incredibly productive and interesting way.

Gizzi: Its a big question and I could come at it in so many waysunlike many of thepeople at this table I dont have other languages. I can barely manage the language thatIve been given, which is American. Language has always been difficult for me. I couldntspell. I was dyslexic. I had a stammer until I was twelve. It always felt like this thing thatwas outside of me using me, bigger than me, older than me. So its a difficult medium. Itsone thats not natural, in some way, to me. But I guess, in my humility, because I onlyhave this language and why I writebecause Ive been taken captive and discoveredmyself in these acts of the American language. I think of Walt Whitman, when I wasyoung. I think of Melville in his sentences and how absolutely gorgeous and symphonicthey are and how hes reaching in every sentence for someway to believe something. Inthe American language, in the 19th centuryI come from the Berkshires where he wrotehis work, but one of the reasons I came back to Massachusetts is because this miraclehappened from Pittsfield to Concord

The American anthem begins playing somewhere in the distance.


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A is for Anonymous

Jane Laforge

Across the pond

the depth and focus

of your lungs and

the reels and stances

of the folds in your throatexacts a change I find

somewhere between

coal and current,

atoms and oceans;

because speaking is control

and muscle, and listening

is cartilage, memory

and contraction. One will

shrink long before the other

becomes aphasic; as long

as no one reads my

unspoken face, I am

perfect. This is to be

our affair, no one

fathoming what the clarity

of your accents mean to adaughter of the deaf,

mouthing the words

along to German television:


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n.detritus.deterere

Andrew E. Colarusso

I.

The Bower will make a home for you gray pinkflamingo chick a reminiscence beams of sun

your hair and quiet fingers boiling away. CanI sit here? flippant unsure but the grass is free

If you are young and I near death can we love?On Church your cheek is warmed honey

and crossing the platform and vanished behinda sliver of silver sped by the last time I taste butterflies

II.

dein aschenes Haar Aidoneus

what is a voice?if frequently repentant willow pollen dein goldenes

fallen Haar


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III.

I will ask you comespinning gold tinctures on spindles your calf

tense on the pedal

I will occupy allof the fugue if you are one live among several

red wilted petals

IV.

geldings are not to speak to horses properor princess as euphemism for gelded mre

mer gelded see your son cataract eyed staringat the sun he pose questions and weep earth

Haemon weeps in two spaces simultaneouslyin a book of poems lace wrapped and in pedigree

of occupied promise slowed to verdigris your loveryour father your list of unbecoming Haemon

geldings are not to speak of horses proper


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V.

So you are sea maid something of the sun in youon the express etched in me or earth the salt

from snows wearing passage in pavement solesblack from exploring the soils in a hurry always

stopping to smell the flora briefly in a hurryalways and anyway

you could not love. like a flower in passing

VI.

layed in the hollows of gifted daffodilsa green cage of sargassum green milk

and out to see top hat black bambburning bible paper

perhaps one day he will take you to Englandcoolie girl. Forget how in some evenings

the caribbean was taken by fire.


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VII.

krik krak of night spooled kreyol streams thisheat they say is voodoo.

the barons are in town. we slept too long in the moon

VIII.

light driftwood in the Bower beak made a homeof small death.


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6 poems

byC M Burroughs


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NIGHTS LARGE FEARS

Hawkweed jimmies window seals. Room for a man whose

liquor eclipses him. Beg quiet the body. Fight.

/strikesoftly, impact nothing. Even your dream, a woman who

allows a woman to die. Leaving from or for the world,

prayer beads iridescentyes/no.

Never admit that the poet in you might use it. Wait, as you

are cut into, long enough to draw the bodys pre-break, the

red cores praxis. Drafts of self and self. Deleting.


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OF A LARGER SEQUENCE

You can hear the rhythm of the ache.

~ William James

My lover has given it a namea row of thistles at the birth of a fieldnow Ifeel moved to a time when folks like him, perhaps like you, give kind names tokinetic happenings. Names that acknowledge pain but dont let it out.

Ten years ago, when my bones were growing, she crept into my bones. A paringknife taken to me, drawn across my forearms and calves to the veins exposure.

The veins then, one by one, threaded from my body till the dressing was donefrom the bone. All this as I breathed, watched, and detected first my trepidarousal then the deadening weight as she riddled in, a tributary on flame. Howto love a sister. How to want her at rest. Now she has a second name. Episode,he says. Eis. Hodos. When she was living, I called hernever mind. She is

changed. Now ends. Now begins.


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ROOM

And a girl and boy inside

A girl spread like force and

a boy frightened of

enjoying it So in the jaw

of enjoyment The red

blouse still buttoned Or

the preserve of blood on

the chest fresh across your

breasts The discarded

jeans The button wide-

eyed and the zipper a

mouth line Sister, speak

to me after this Im sorry

I dreamt it like this


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UNPACKING

The plasma of the dream is the pain of separation.

Dreamers dream from the neck up.

Dead. Sorry, let me answer the question. Boxed.Dead.

Your jawbone and a few chips of skull. Yes.Im sorry.

I went insane, in the dream.You returned home.

No. I wandered and bled.For what?

For whom.For whom.

For you.Then memory turns inward.

With a strange, clutching brilliance, andI go over these scenes and incidents perpetually.

[ ]Is that insanity?

No. Love.


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THE LAST WORD

Of my lovers favorite novel is

smoke~ so passablehis hyphen,

imposed. The last gesture of

my lovers unforced favorite

position unhouses, evolves. Of:

broke her back/broke her heart/

especially, broke into a run. The

rind of each signifying schism;

the soft consonants, his want to

be whole, a threshold: He quivers,

turns from the curdle of a woman,

a continent, a cunt, same sweet

hole; learns the tense sensation

of freedom. Begins, strides off,

dripping thefirstsegregation,

I


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ON IMPACTAfter Susan Wicks

We watched the bird beginat the verandas edge and taking off with mission into the

French doors five feet ahead. A red bird reddening. Sexed in vermeil. Damaged. Days, this

continuedyou saw it. The bird dying for the bird: how to love the self. A week at least, at last.

The elongated click of its mouth a tension, repetition. The work of watching its attempts to

die. The wordspleaseand dontmined from every throat in that house. As much as we were

witnesses, we did not see its beak gag, did not see it die. But gently noticed no refrain, no

rhythm at the glassits body or betrothal gone.


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A little ant went on anouting in the desert.

Why did it leave a line

in the desert insteadof footprints?


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83/88

How did his parents

know that he wasback, though they

neither saw him norheard him?


84/88

Because they saw hisbike.

Quan Zhang


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editors

Andrew E. Colarusso

Eric Adamson

Easlin AndersonKatie Stallsmith

fragments of text include:

Theodor Adorno Minima MoraliaInstructions found in a box of chess

Camille Paglia, Break, Blow, Burn

Avital Ronell, Crack Wars: Towards a NarcoanalysisAvital Ronell, On the Misery of Theory without Poetry:

Heideggers Reading of Hlderlins Andenken

Special thanks to:

Alan Bermensolo

Noel Sikorski

Ugly Duckling Presse

David Jou

Matvei Yankelevich

James Copeland

SUPERMACHINE

New York University

Scott Statland

John Casteen

Geoffrey Nutter

Maggie Owsley www.andthenphotos.com

All rights revert to author upon publication

2010 The Broome Street Review: Cold Humor


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COLOPHON

The Broome Street Review is set in Hoefler

The cover-text is set in Champagne & Limousines,created by Lauren Thompson

The back-cover is typeset in Franklin Gothic Book

Cover image Maggy and Moggy provided by Matt Dawsonhttp://www.matt-dawson.co.uk/

The Broome Street Review no. 2 is printed in a run of 100 copies

Printed with Bookmobile


87/88

A little boy ranhome, crying,

Its not fair! All my

classmates told me that

my head is like a kite!

Then he flew up.


88/88

$1

Once there was a bigfire in the cornfield,

and all the corn

became popcorn.A little bird saw this

and said to its mom,

MOM!MOM!ITS SNOWING.Then the little bird died

because of the cold

cold humor2

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